Pomegranates
by bonafake
Summary: ONE-SHOT: Now, she saw his very first smile, and it wasn't a good smile, no, no, it was the kind of smile that burnt your insides and froze them at the same time, it hurt other people and didn't care, but it loved her unconditionally. HG/TR. (tumblr request; edited 7/1/16.)
**Pomegranates**

 _By: BonaFake_

###

 **Author's Note:** _Hello there. Here lies my very first Tomione. Does this feel like we're going down the rabbit hole again? Oh, wait- NO. Through the looking glass. I already used the rabbit hole metaphor before the first Dramione I wrote. (Restorative. Go check it out.) But oh my fucking god, the looking glass is a good metaphor._

 _Request more one shots (any pairing besides Romione or Snily) on my tumblr, through FFN's pm function, or my gmail account bonafake3 AT gmail DOT com._

 _This is a Persephone and Hades Tomione AU, requested by an anon on tumblr. I hope they enjoy!_

###

-2

 _He looked at her, sitting in the dirt with an air of confusion around her. She stared down at her shoeless feet. If Hermione had known she was going to be traveling to the Underworld today, she would have worn something on her feet. But there was nothing to do for it now. Except perhaps to cry; for her mother and blazing tangerine sunsets and vibrant candy pink flowers, none of which were here at all. She was lost._

 _"Stop crying," he said in a stiff tone, and grabbed her hand. Hermione looked up at him. There are some people that are perfect. Tom Riddle could have been one of them, perhaps if he'd not kidnapped her and brought her to a land without wheat. She narrowed her eyes at the angular man._

 _"I've heard about you," she said, and got up on her own. "They say you're a bad person that does terrible things." Her pale organza dress, coral and cerise, was torn and looked like iron and ashes in the darkened underworld._

 _"It comes with the territory," Tom Riddle replied, holding a hand out to walk her past the river between here and there. She shivered at the sound of his voice. Cold, yes, deep, yes, deadly, no. Beautiful, yes. Haunting, certainly. But deadly? Never._

 _And she didn't look up, and she didn't take his hand, and she didn't put on his cloak when she started shivering in the cold air of the underworld. She looked at the river where life and death collide, and she wondered which side she was on. Maybe it was somewhere in the middle, a place where life was worse than death. That was the opposite, right?_

 _Tom Riddle, the lord of death, guided her towards a distant field. As they approached, a behemoth palace began to loom out of the mist. It hid everything, that mist. It clung to buildings and clothes and the dead spirits that Hermione saw milling about in the field. "Home," Riddle said, sweeping his hand towards the palace and pushing his dark hair away from his even darker eyes. there was a glint in them, a glint that she couldn't quite recognize._

 _Hermione Granger tried very, very hard not to run screaming from the place, from him. Somehow, she managed._

###

+3

She lays down in the middle of the dying field, onyx brocade dress whipping around in the uncommon underworld wind. Tom Riddle lies next to her on his side. His tar colored suit shifts and changes, dark grays appearing in the liquorice and ebony. Hands, his, thin and pale with veins popping out at the wrists, cup her chin carefully. The claret fruit between them stains her lips brightly, though her smile is even more evident. Perhaps it is the first time he's seen it.

"They're going to come for you, Hermione," he says, running his fingers through her cinnamon hair. She is so beautiful. And she is his.

"I know," she replies, and turns to face him. "Are you alright with that?"

He pulls her closer to him. "You are mine," he says with a pause. "They can't take you away from me forever or entirely."

"Then we should go meet the imbecile that they've sent for me," she responds, capturing his lips in a kiss. She tastes like something sweet and bitter at once, and then she deepens it, and it tastes like something darker has awoken inside of both of them. But then he stops, breaks apart, breaks them, before the kiss turns into something more. They have already had more.

"We should go," he says to his beauty before standing up, and offering his hand to her. She grabs it, and he helps to pull her to his feet.

Hermione nods with obvious reluctance, and begins to walk to the Styx. He follows her, suit coattails drifting in the wind.

They meet Stan Shunpike in the entranceway to hell. "Hello," she says, calm and composed. Hermione, it seems to him, has come to an understanding with herself.

Shunpike looks at her oddly, at the raven dress and the scarlet lips and at her amber eyes that have a new sort of darkness that the poor man from above has never seen before, and he forces a smile onto his face and says, "I'll be takin ya home now, missus."

Hermione nods, and leans towards Tom. He kisses her on the forehead so that she doesn't forget and says, "You can go, you know. Go back to your mother and your candy pink flowers and your tangerine sunsets." Somehow, he keeps the bitterness out of his voice. "Just don't forget me."

She looks stunned, shell shocked, and he loves it for a second.

Stan Shunpike coughs and leads her onto his bus. He misses her already.

Tom Riddle tries very, very hard not to run after the bus, after her. Somehow, he manages.

###

-1

 _"Well?" he asked, looking at her, his queen, in gleeful expectation. "What do you think?"_

 _Hermione chewed her amaranth lips as she wondered how to respond. What does one say about a really large amount of souls that are either drowning in rust-colored lava or pushing a drab grey rock up a black hill forever and ever and ever? What should she say? "It's lovely," she managed to get out, choking on her words._

 _"Don't lie for me," he said, and looked into her eyes._

 _"Well then, it's terrifying," admitted Hermione. "And I hate it."_

 _But suddenly, suddenly, they weren't staring into the Fields of Punishment anymore, looking at the broken, sad, tortured people. No. They were standing in front of something marvelous._

 _It was grand, buttery gold that glowed in the beautiful floating lights, alabaster marble that shone and when his black leather boots touched it, clicked and clacked like a horse's hooves on dirt. The shades here were happy, basking in the golden days and lights. Hermione couldn't help but smile. It was so beautiful, it wasn't the type of beautiful that hurt, no, no, it was the beauty of perfection without any of the bitterness, the perfection of love without heartbreak, love without question or doubt._

 _"I like this place far, far better," she intoned, looking into his dark eyes, the ones that smiled at her while the rest of Tom's face remained a silent riddle._

 _"Good," he replied, and now she saw his very first smile, and it wasn't a good smile, no, no, it was the kind of smile that burnt your insides and froze them at the same time, it hurt other people and didn't care, but it loved her unconditionally. She could lose herself so easily in eyes like that, a smile like that. Something unconditional like that. So she did._

###

+2

Where is she? Ginny wonders, walking down the dirt path. This was a path that they had walked together, hair whipping around in the breeze, flowers in hand. It hurts, knowing that she is gone. She has almost used up her tears. There is no place on this earth that she could be right now, and to be honest, she is very, very angry. Hermione Granger, her best friend, has been taken, and she has no way of knowing where she is, of even if she's alright.

Ginny looks around the field, filled with small, white, woody flowers, flowers shaped like stars, flowers that Hermione would have loved. She sighs. She's been doing a lot of sighing recently. She's been sighing ever since the very nice lady whose child she stuck in a fireplace kicked her out.

It wasn't that big a deal, really. She'd done it for the kid. But either way, she's been kicked out and now she's mad; not just at the woman, but at everyone else, too, for not having taken precautions to save Hermione. She wails at the wind howling around her. Why had they done this?

And now she knows, she knows that Hermione was taken by him, by Tom, Lord of Death. She shivers.

Ginny needs Hermione back, and there's really only one way of doing that. She asks Harry, demands it. So he does.

###

0

 _"Teach me," is the first thing she said when he saw her that morning, two weeks after she got lost in his dark eyes and smile. "Teach me how you do it."_

 _"Do what?" he asked innocently, buttoning up his crisp white shirt and pulling his dark woolen coat over it. "You didn't specify."_

 _"Show me how to lead them," she responded, breathless. He tied his snow-white cravat around his neck; he smiled at her with cold, dark eyes and thin crimson lips. "Please."_

 _And it was the only time she'd ever used that word with him; it was probably the only time she ever will. But she did- that time- and his face- his face was worth every single letter._

 _"Why do you want to learn?" Tom asked, combing his hair back and looking at her with a completely different expression than he had before. He had such a good control of his emotions, she knew now._

 _"Because- because you know how to, and I think I can do it too."_

 _"Wrong answer, Hermione," he responded, and tapped her on the nose before exiting the room._

 _She followed behind, quickly, and tugged on the sleeve of his charcoal suit. "Because I saw them last night, and they called to me," Hermione said, telling the truth. She hoped he believed her._

 _He turned around, sharply, staring at her. "They did?"_

 _Hermione nodded. "Yes."_

 _That was the first time he kissed her; vermillion lips meeting her cotton candy ones in a flurry of heat and confusion and hope. The second, happening only a few hours after that, was when she finally called the spirits to her attention and led them to the gates of hell._

 _The third was after the shades began to bow at her presence and called her "Queen Hermione." Her old name was gone._

 _Their fourth was one that Hermione herself started, while leading them across the boat and she saw broken dreams reflected in his eyes. Later, she didn't know why she did it. Perhaps it was because she was not one of them._

 _The fifth and sixth kisses were consecutive, one against a cold stone wall for a fleeting, leaping, flying minute, the sixth in his room after she'd finally gotten to unbutton his ashen coat for the first time._

 _After that, she stopped counting._

###

+1

People keep asking him where she'd gone, what he'd done to the nymphs that were supposed to be attending to her when she was taken, what sort of arrangements he's made for her in the Underworld, and he hasn't got a fucking clue about the answer to a single one of the questions.

He hopes Tom will take care of her down there. She is his sister, after all.

Ron, the red haired man with a temper to match, offers to go down and "save her." He shakes his head no. Somehow, he knows that it will only do more bad than good. Tom was promised a bride, and Persephone is the only one that fit the description. Harry wonders if Tom knows that there's a lot beneath her sweet flowery exterior. He wonders if Tom knows that when he asked for a girl, it was her description exactly.

It had all been a very clever plan, he knew. Send her off on an errand to find daffodils and sunshine and the one plant there is, she picks. And then she's stuck. He doesn't know why his friends keep underestimating him. After all, he has defeated the Dark Lord of Time.

But the questions keep coming, so finally Harry sticks the nymphs on rocks to sing people to death in case anyone asks, which they don't, and he demands very loudly for Tom to give them details, which he doesn't, and he states that he'll send people off to search for her, which they don't. All in all, it's very unproductive, and Harry wonders why the hell he signed up to be a bureaucrat in the first place. And then he remembers that oh, he didn't.

The people still ask questions. After all, Hermione was really very well liked. It's not a surprise that people miss her.

Ginny approaches him and asks for Hermione's return. She slaps him at least six times during the exchange. And then they have sex, when she bites him, too. More than seven, less than twelve scratch marks up and down his back, at least five hard bites on his neck. They hurt, too.

She kisses him one more time and asks with a please and a simper. When he says no, there's a new bite on his neck. Six now.

After that, he stops counting.

###

-3

She stands in the field, holding her flowers in hand. They are beautiful, sunset-orange gladiolus and royal-purple pansies, held in her delicate hands, but no daffodils yet. Hermione looks around the field. Her maids have all deserted her; they've no stomach for the heat. it is sweltering, but what does she care? She is looking for a flower for her dear brother in all but blood.

Hermione has not found it yet. But oh! There, across the field, in lemony yellow and pure white, is the daffodil! She runs towards it, quickly, grabs it in her hand- and she is stuck.

Stuck like true love in a marble sculpture, stuck like a genius in a labyrinth.

Trapped.

And then- then- there is a carriage in front of her. It is driven by sooty black horses and an aristocratically beautiful man wearing a leather coat. She is frozen as if she was waiting for him her whole life. "Hello, Hermione," he says, and holds out his hand.

She doesn't say anything. "Come with me. We're betrothed, and you've got to come with me," he says, sounding a bit more annoyed.

Still, she stays silent. Finally, when they've stood there for far too long, he grabs her hand. "Hermione, we're going."

The man pulls her onto his magnificent carriage, and seats her across from the horses. How did he know that she liked them? On closer inspection, though, the horses are a lot less horse-like than she would have prefered. There's a charcoal colored skeleton underneath their rich coats. She shudders.

Hermione doesn't know why she's think of horses now, not when they're going.

The carriage picks up speed, and they're heading down, down, down, and it's getting darker, darker, darker. She can see the glint of his smile in the blackness.

She screams.


End file.
